“You’re probably right,” Greg said. Now he wanted the afternoon wrapped up. Marie could do that: pull him in, mesmerize him, and then say or do something that left him blinking, wondering where he was and how he’d gotten there. He had never told anyone how he felt about his mother, maybe because a small part of him worried he was being overdramatic, and here Marie was confirming just that. Pull, push, pull push, a decade-and-a-half carnival ride that started under an angry sun one afternoon during college.
“I’m not saying it’s easy,” she said. She put her hand on his knee. Her hand was cold and dry, which made her seem even more unreal, and he worried his knee would begin to sweat and tarnish her perfect doll’s hand. “It’s not easy being someone’s child, is it? Everyone always talks about how hard being a parent is. Being a child is worse, because you have to survive despite your parents. And you have to make them proud but also forge your own path.”
Greg nodded. Her hand began to feel heavy, alien, it was all Greg could think about. He wanted to laugh, wanted to point out to Marie how everything she’d just said could have been in one of those films about how hard it was to be a teenager. In truth he’d felt like an adult trapped in a child’s body his whole life. “Do you want to walk me to my dorm?” she asked. “Fair warning, I have a single, so we can be alone, but I’m a virgin.”
She stood, held out a hand to help him up, but Greg felt frozen, shot through with adrenaline. Was she saying they were about to have sex? Or was she saying she was definitely not going to have sex with him? He felt his blood racing through his body while his arms and legs felt tranquilized. He felt like he was on a bad high. He wanted the coldest can of beer available. He was also a virgin.
Later Greg would think how he had seen her at a party and spoken to her for a total of thirty minutes at the library. That was it. That was all he needed to know. But sometimes knowing everything about a person can get in the way. Without Marie, no GJ. I never asked to be born. GJ had pulled that out of his bag of tricks on more than one occasion, usually when arguing, but sometimes when he seemed tired, beyond help. Yes you did, Greg wanted to say. You were desperate to be born. You were there on the steps that day, like a gas. Drugging us. It’s not my fault you can’t handle it. Who can?
They went back to Marie’s dorm room, walking down the seventeen steps and across the choked and crackling lawn. She lived in the smart-kids dorm, all brick and scrollwork and columns, the student at the front desk nodding and then looking away without asking just what was going on here. Marie had a framed chalkboard on her door, an empty piece of string where a nub of chalk had once been. A smear of white dust. What did it say before it was erased? “I’m not going to have sex with you,” she said. “Not today, anyway.” But she was wrong. The silence in her room, her broken desk chair, the bed a magnet for sitting and then lying, they didn’t stand a chance. Both of them probably thinking, Well, let’s just get it over with. She pulled his shirt up; she put her cold hand on his hip. He placed his lips on hers. Mrs. Helen standing in her kitchen, hands spread on the bar that faced into the den, hunched over and staring at her son and his friends like a coach at halftime. And don’t ever put your tongue in a girl’s mouth uninvited. You hear me? It had been unclear what motivated this moment of advice, possibly a commercial that had been popular around then, where a woman uses a new toothpaste and men can’t stop walking up to her and kissing her, tasting her. Greg had never seen her so serious, and it stuck with him. So he put his lips to Marie’s lips and waited for his invitation, which came via the tip of her tongue, darting out like the probe of some deep-sea creature. Anyone out there? He wondered how a girl this beautiful and strange could be so inexperienced, so untouched. He put his hand on her shoulder, then her elbow, and then her waist, wanting to give her his whole tongue, both of them tasting like egg salad and salt. She lay back and he moved over her, positioning them into a pair of parallel planes, the position of the inexperienced. Looked into her black eyes, the sweat at her hairline while she pushed her jeans down and then his. It was not an easy thing, pushing in, past the exasperated barrier, moving among blood, especially with a gasping stranger. And even then, trying to drown out the numbers in his head, trying not to count the thrusts, trying not to lose himself in the rule of threes. If something adds up to three, six, or nine, then it is divisible by three. He lost count after fifteen. By then he felt swallowed by her, wrapped in her hair and arms and that deep dark entryway he plunged into again and again, like a boy who has just learned the joy of the high jump. It wasn’t just that it felt good; it was that it felt. He was all sensation, like his body was a giant tongue. He looked down at her to see if she felt the same way, but her eyes were closed. Sounds escaped his lips, grunts and yips like he’d never made before. Marie mostly sighed, but not necessarily in a bad way. He told himself, reviewing it all later, they’d both entered the void, if only for a moment. Void has four letters. Not divisible by three. But avoids has six letters. Divisible by three down to two. After that afternoon in her dorm, they were two, and then a few years later they became three, and then they became one and one and one.
The sack of burgers Greg had purchased from the Krystal was half full now, and probably cold, but he knew they’d taste heavenly in the night when he wasn’t sure if he could push on. They’d be like energy tablets, little sliders of grease and grace, something to look forward to. He and GJ used to get a sack each, it was their little secret from Deb, and the burgers had to be eaten outside the car or else she’d smell it. They’d sit on the trunk or the hood or at a picnic bench if they felt like driving to the park to watch the muddy water lapping at the shore and the ducks swiveling their necks, impatient for a morsel. Laughing at their rudeness, their open demands. Having a secret with his son like that felt like he was doing something right. A necessary indulgence, this harmless nothing in the scheme of things, that sideways grin GJ would allow when Greg slowed the car to turn in to the Krystal’s parking lot. Shh, they’d whisper to each other. Don’t tell Deb. Sometimes he did tell Deb. It felt good to recap, to revisit the bonding, the afternoon’s new heap of cement, make sure it was dry. And, sure, to give himself a little credit for doing something right. When he thought of GJ’s childhood he remembered yelling a lot. And when he wasn’t yelling, he didn’t have a lot to say to the boy. What they don’t tell you is it’s all work. Parenting, marriage. They’re both jobs. Nothing ever seemed easy. But those moments eating that shitty food and grinning at each other, that felt easy.
Sometimes Greg had to remind himself that GJ was almost thirty years old now. When he himself was thirty he was married with a child and a mortgage on that tiny place they’d bought when they first moved to Florida. The Shed is what they called it. It looked like a game piece, an approximation of what a house might look like. Square and squat, the front of the house flat, shutters fixed to the sides of the two windows. The door flush with the rest of the house, no porch, no shelter from the sun or the mean rains Florida liked to bestow out of nowhere.
Still, when he thought of GJ he thought of a boy, or a young man. Not the father-aged adult mess that he seemed to be now. GJ’s hairline receding, his teeth shifting, crowding each other, stubble staining his face. He was aging, like Greg had aged. Of all the disappointments a father can have in his son, that had to be up there. Bodies aged and gave out. No one could stop it. Even if he’d tried as hard as he could, even if he had really done his best as a father, Greg could never stop it.
A school bus passed him, the children with their hands plastered on the windows like starfish, a dark-haired boy licking the window, another child waving at Greg and smiling big, like they knew each other. He waved and the child threw her head back and laughed, pointing at him, like what a dummy, this guy out here waving back at me, this guy practicing a societal norm, as Marie would say. He was about five hundred miles from her, enough time to assemble the armor he’d need, inside and out. He and Deb had a brick fireplace at the house, and he imagined bricking himse
lf up like that: brick inside and brick outside and a fire going straight up the middle and out the top. Not whooshing out and catching anything. Nothing dangerous or untoward. It had been years since he’d seen Marie, probably since the first time they took GJ to rehab. They’d done it together, then, as a family. He and Deb in the Volvo, Marie behind them in her Kia. GJ switching cars when they stopped for gas or to pee, drinking a flat bottle of rum with a straw, then moving to a Big Gulp invaded by vodka. It felt like a monumental journey. It felt like they were driving GJ to health. All they had to do was drop him off, act like a support system, show that they were there for him as a unit, and thirty days later he’d be okay. You know, Marie had said, I read that the chances of relapse after rehab are so large that it’s almost guaranteed. They were standing by their cars, none of them certain if they should wait some more, if they were supposed to go in and put sheets on GJ’s bed, put his toothbrush in the holder, put his T-shirts and underwear in drawers for him, eat dinner with him, find a more official way of saying goodbye than the one they’d actually had: watching him be led by the elbow through double doors that made an angry buzz as they closed behind him. GJ had put two fingers up in a wave, but he hadn’t turned around, hadn’t given them his face, and Greg wondered if they were doing the right thing or if GJ was being pushed further into the hole he hid from them in, and the doors were basically agreeing with him, growling WRONG. Wroooonnnnggg. And in the circular drive, Marie leaning against the Volvo like it was hers, her sunglasses slightly crooked, her arms crossed, casually mentioning that this whole thing, this rehab, which had felt like salvation on the drive up, was doomed from the start. I just think you need to be prepared. Saying you. Not we. For Greg, it had been enough. Addicts talk about reaching bottom, and how they know the next step is death or get better, and for Greg his bottom had been watching his ex-wife, GJ’s mother, once again telling him what he needed to do, not for a second dropping all pretenses and just admitting that she was sad, and sorry, and that she didn’t know what to do or where to go. They took GJ to his next three rehabs separately after that. One would take him; the other would pick him up. It had been enough for both of them.
She was right, though. GJ relapsed a month after getting home. Drinking beers at dinner, offering to get one for Greg and Deb, Greg deciding beers weren’t anything to worry about, as long as GJ’s eyes stayed clear. And then GJ gone two whole days and Deb missing forty dollars from her wallet.
Sometimes on those afternoons with the sacks of burgers he’d let GJ have a beer. Just one. And the boy rarely finished it. Tastes like urine, he said once. How do you know? Greg asked. GJ laughing, his cheeks red. So in a way Greg had forced it on him. The pleasure of the buzz.
Greg stepped on the gas, moving the RV up from 50 to 60. Memory Lane always made him impatient. If he could just get to GJ, if he could just find him. At the very least, he’d be able to put his arms around his son. Rock bottom, but together. Together at rock bottom.
The radio was playing a song he,d heard three times in the six hours he’d been driving. Don’t you forget about me. Greg wanted to smash the console with his fist even as he sang along. La la la la … He had to stop. He was thirsty and it was late. The streetlights along the highway whipping by him, flashes and trails, making the world feel more dark. He wasn’t going to make it to Marie’s all in one drive like he wanted to. He’d rest up, shower, get back on the road, arrive his best self rather than the ragged one he was dragging behind him. If GJ was at Marie’s house, then he was probably safe. If he wasn’t, then there was nothing a few hours of rest could change.
These were the things he said to himself, that voice inside him getting louder, more insistent, repeating these pick-up sticks of logic that made pulling over into the diner/strip club not just a decision he was making, but a necessary one. There was food there, and a Days Inn a hundred yards off where he felt sure he could park the RV and sleep, and there were people and music and all the rest of it. He pulled into the extravagant parking lot, where they had spaces for compacts and trucks and RVs and even semis. He wasn’t the only one who yearned. He was simply one among many. The ratio of cars driving by to cars parked in the lot said he was normal, just a normal man with a thirst.
He had never been good about stepping outside of his routine. When he wasn’t doing what he always did it seemed like all bets were off, anything was possible; he was exposed.
He switched off the engine, the car’s sudden silence hissing and loud. His shoulders ached; he’d been holding them up close to his ears. Only now could he see that driving the RV was not an easy thing, that this trip was rooting around in his body and shellacking his joints, freezing his limbs and torso and making him feel like he needed a chisel to shift in his seat.
He dialed the house. If he was going into a strip club the least he could do was call Deb first. It was just past ten o’clock. Usually by that time he’d been asleep for an hour or more, and Deb was putting down her cross-stitch or her book or switching off the TV on the odd day she actually watched something, about ready to head up and lie next to him in bed.
“Well, how’s it going so far?” Caller ID meant Deb rarely answered with Hello?
“Fine, I stopped at the Krystal.” This seemed the safer confession to make.
“Oh, Greg.” At his last checkup the doctor had asked him how long he wanted to live. How long do you want to live? As easy as if he’d asked him, What will you eat for dinner tonight? He hadn’t waited for Greg to answer; he’d calmly explained that Greg was killing himself faster than old age ever would, and that he needed to start walking, eating better, drinking less. The doctor’s voice smooth, unbroken, like the doctor didn’t even need air to speak, just rattling off this death sentence and offering Greg a way out, but only for a short while. He’d driven straight to the grocery store afterward, done the equivalent of sweeping his hand across a desk, pulling all sorts of alien fruits and vegetables into his basket. He’d even grabbed a box of green tea. Took it all home and put it away, yanking out boxes of Twinkies and packages of bacon and bricks of American cheese and the mocha-nut creamer he put in his coffee and sometimes drank straight from the bottle if Deb wasn’t home.
“I know,” Greg said. “I just felt like treating myself.”
Deb had made a salad for dinner the night he brought home that grocery-store harvest, a bright and colorful meal that looked like a picture and made Greg’s heart sink to look at it. The grape tomatoes burst in his mouth, his tongue dodging the slime; the shredded carrots tasted like earth; the radishes released a fume that snaked from his throat up to his nose and made him want to hack the mouthful onto his plate. So that’s what radishes tasted like. Now he knew. They rotted at the bottom of the crisper drawer, they and the lettuce heads and the carrots in their peels. Deb pulled them out a month later, floating in their bags in what looked like lake water, scrubbed the crisper in the sink so it was clean and empty and ready for more bacon.
He guessed that’s what sobriety felt like to GJ: a lurid, hopeful salad that he could not even pretend to choke down.
“Did you keep your phone charged?” Deb asked. She had decided to forgo the lecture. Lately, she’d lectured him less and less. Giving up. A relief and a warning, for Greg.
“I did,” he said. “I’m going to stop for the night. I’m exhausted.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
They were quiet for a minute or so, listening to each other breathe. It never felt awkward to be quiet in Deb’s presence. It never felt like she was waiting for him to do or say anything.
“Well, tomorrow when you eat breakfast, see if you can’t find one of those smoothie places. Or get the oatmeal at Starbucks. Something to balance you out,” she said. Always offering a solution, a weight for the other side of the scale. The neon sign outside the diner was of a woman leaning back on her palms, knees up, kicking one leg out and bringing it back again. The neon ropes of her hair tumbling down her back, unmoving.
“That’s a good idea.”
“I’ve got book club tomorrow night, so if you call me I might not be here.”
“Got it.”
“But you can text me an update, or call during the day.”
“I will.”
“Good,” she said, and he heard her catch a yawn. She was about to hang up. One of them would say Okay, then …
“Greg,” she said.
“Mm?” he said. He had been about to be the one to say Okay, then … He watched a tall man in a ball cap get out of an RV next to his, hitching his pants up, walking the way Greg knew he himself would be walking, like his legs were fighting quicksand.
“When you see Marie, just remember you both want the same thing. You both want GJ home. Or found. Just remember that.”
“I don’t know if that’s what Marie wants.” He surprised himself by answering this way. Maybe he wanted to argue with Deb about having any kind of common ground with Marie, who often felt less like a fellow parent and more like another child, someone you had to navigate land mines to get near. Or maybe he didn’t like the idea that for Deb there were only two options: GJ home or GJ found. He tried to soften it, change what he said. “I don’t know what she wants. I haven’t in years.”
“Greg.” Deb was using the tone she used when he needed to listen, to gather all parts of himself back from where they’d wandered and report for duty. “You and Marie want the same thing. And you both don’t know what to do or if you should even keep fighting for GJ. You’re the blind leading the blind, and that’s okay. Okay?”
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